You've got your tax cuts in my bailout! (or: Where's My Bailout?)

Comments posted to an article in The Nation about unemployment and the White House's jobs summit thing:

Joblessness? What's the big deal? Why don't we just spend 100 trillion dollars and pay everyone in America $1,000,000 per year! Problem solved!
Isn't liberal economics fun?
-Posted by pontificus at 12/02/2009 @ 09:09am

Or cut 100 trillion in taxes to Steve Forbes and Citgo...and we can all get jobs writing for a magazine or working on an oil rig?
Isn't conservative economics fun?
-Posted by Mask at 12/02/2009 @ 09:26am

look at post #2 and #3...this is essentially the nation anonymous web postings boiled down to two opposing sides...
and this is how we rant, over and over and over, forever...
it's a wonderful life!
-Posted by urmygyro at 12/02/2009 @ 09:30am

Class Matters

The paragraphs below are from one of the regular emails I receive from Media Matters, a great watchdog organization of elite media and the entrenched political and business class interests they usually speak to and for.

Yes, they are left-leaning--unapologetically so. They contend that, despite the view to the contrary of a few overweight and Irish right-wing blowhards and their hater-audiences, the news media is for the most part a mouth piece for conservative values and perspective.

---

"Warren Buffett, who knows a thing or two about wealth, has noted that because of the way the tax code is structured, he effectively pays taxes at a lower rate than the secretaries who work for him, concluding: "There's class warfare, all right. But it's my class, the rich class, that's making war, and we're winning."

One reason they're winning is that the news media do not use the loaded phrases "class warfare" and "redistribution of wealth" to describe things like the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, or the home mortgage deduction (which favors those who are wealthy enough to buy homes over those who are not) or countless other policies that benefit wealthier Americans at the expense of those who are less fortunate. Instead, the media pretend this is a one-sided war -- as though the wealthy are being unfairly assaulted by an army of bullying waitresses and janitors and farmers and teachers.

Another reason is articles like [the] Washington Post front-pager. The Post tells us in paragraph one that Obama plans to raise taxes on the wealthy and waits until paragraph 18 to reveal that he plans to make permanent a tax credit for low- and middle-income workers. A tax increase that applies to almost nobody -- that leads the article. A tax credit that applies to much of the nation's workforce? Buried 18 paragraphs in."

Geitner opens up to Charlie

Increased taxes on top 5%: modest, 2001 size, so that gains more broadly shared--like the productive 90's.

Responsible budget. council of economic advisers, independent. careful.

Slowly: recovery period, starting this year.

Automobiles. let'em go bankrupt? half not their fault. not tenable.

Responsibility and obligation, he feels, to fix this (after all he was head of the federal reserve up here while this was all going to hell). yet they were aggressive. hm.

Capitalism's already drastically different. a cleaning out of excesses, looking forward; rules enforced fairly.

the Will to do. acting, action, keep at it.

---

Charlie was somber tonight.

New New Deal?

Apt, says Paul Krugman.
New-WPA needed, as well, for infrastructure and jobs.

FDR didn't do enough, pulled back to soon.
They had WWII, does that make our wars helpful?

Fantasy of "national unity after the election" would have had a stimulus plan sooner.
Internet,
electrical grid,
weatherproofing and greening,
public transit,
but payroll tax?

Yeah,
yeah whatever.
When pointed out
the contradiction that
while its rational to save,
we need to spend our way out.

Japan in the 90's? An FDR-sinner. Wasn't a depression, but could have.

Courage. We have nothing to fear but fear of infrastructure spending:

Rail,
energy conversation,
broadband initiative,
health care--medical records electrified.

I like numbers; what do you like?

1.75 trillion - budget deficit, 1/2 of which will be reduced over the next 4 years.

0 - how many subsidies farmers making over 1/2 million will receive. (Yay!)

5 vs 95 - (annual income of less-than vs. more-than $250,000) percentages of the Obama-designated class divide.

2011 - year tax increases (or, really, just rescinded tax breaks from Bush 2 that will help rich people pay their share--see 4.6 below) take effect on the above %5.

4.6 - the percentage of the increase. Seriously? Everybody (of the 5%; i.e., individuals making 200,000 and household making more than $250,000 a year) needs to stop being such dicks. C'mon, really? That's $9,200 more a year for a single person making over 2 hundred thousand. Really, you're going to bitch about that when we're supposed to be concerned our whole society might be falling a part? Get a grip.

For someone making $1 million, 4 times the lowest in the percentile, that's $46,ooo--enough for an education at a decent school and good health insurance. Oh please, Mr. Millionaire, send a poor kid to college; especially if you don't have your own. Won't that make you feel good?

Well, honestly, I don't really care if it does, but you owe us, man. Since the time of Regan, you've had tax cuts and loopholes and tort reform and a sharp decline in crime (and yet somehow, an ever growing prison population--hm, failed War on Drugs, anyone?) and high-end condos and Trader Joe's in cool neighborhoods (see decline in crime) and cocaine and the BlackBerry, nay iPhone.

x>0 - pictures taken of returning war dead.

2 new members (possibly) of Congress = DC + Utah

100 - the % of existing-home sales in CA increased in the past year. That's kind of good news, right?